


dancing on gravestones

by theableboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eating Disorders, Fear of Death, Happy Ending, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 15:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16348955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theableboy/pseuds/theableboy
Summary: Dean goes looking for coffins one day, when he thinks Sam might actually die.





	dancing on gravestones

He is falling apart. Dean doesn't know when he realizes this, but one night, when the silk sway of clouds forms into an ominent array of clutter, his brother slips simply into his arms with a twist of feet and a pile of morphing bones. He can feel smoke rising inside his chest, clutching and pulling, a frantic beat of terror throbbing against dry throat. It pushes a strangle and a begging name past quivering lips.

“Sweetheart, open your eyes - please!” 

Sam's head lolls with such fragility and lightness, that Dean is sure the boy in his arms is a ghost; a simple wisp of goneness, kissed by a veil of innocence. Dean traces each dead part of him.

There, underneath corded neck and resting above anorexic clavicle, a frivolous chant of life hums into the tips of his fingers and Dean falls over crying, kissing the skin. Making love to it.

“Wake up, Sammy, just.. stop scaring the hell out of me already.”

This was impurity, the way Dean gave. The way he ached for the evil. Because to have Sam would be a hand guided by the devil, and to love Sam, with incestual sweetness and the bidding of his own life, would be craftsmanship of dire intentions. Yet, at this moment, there is a casing of molded being, snug against the walls of Dean's side, and he would give it all. A devil's advocate for the doomed. 

Dean places his palm there, above breastbone, closes his eyes and thinks of Sam.

SamSamSamSam: a child with caves in his cheeks and a boy whose eyes carry amber fields. Dean loves and he loves, but he doesn't know where he went wrong, he can't figure out when he lost or why Sam stopped eating. 

“I can feel you, Sammy, your racing heart. Calm down, darling - it's okay. I'm here. I got you.”

The silence awakens with a crack and a repetitive pelt against thin motel window. 

A storm was brewing and Sam lay like a sweep of dust, caught in the middle of it.

\---

“Sit.” Dean instructs Sam, with a cherishing of closed fist, tries to ignore the way his kid's head falls to his chest and how his body shakes. Sam slumps into the chair pulled out for him, bites at his nails and refuses to look up, and Dean just wants to yell, spew out a weightful of ill-intended words, too heavy for the pureness of Sammy's soul.

“Oh, don't fucking start, Sam. You're all a rack of bones; an anthropologist's wet dream. So stop moping and eat.” Dean is quiet before he adds, “Or I'll force it down your throat.” 

Sam sips the milk from his cereal, let's the liquid fester between his lips, but he never gets an ounce of grain, and eventually, Dean is left with mushy Fruity Pebbles and a wry smirk, perched on a precious, nonage boy.

Dean doesn't think he could handle it, carrying Sam's body to the grave. 

“Alright. Fine.” Dean's anger surfaces like the last remnants of a dead man being drowned alive, it bubbles out of him in fragmented moments and settles over like a ripple expanding over calm waters.

He drags them both to the sink, and Sam's ragdoll body goes with it. 

Bearing down with a hand on his neck, Sam's mouth opens with instinction and Dean tips the bowl of swirling colors down the pipe of baby brother throat, relishes at the sight of bobbing apple. 

Against the restriction of old Levi jeans, Dean suddenly becomes aware of his growing arousal, pushing with force against the bareness of Sam's leg.

And Dean can't bring himself to calm down after that.  
\--

He's in the bath, hugging little body and apologizing into a mess of wet hair adhering to tender vertebrae. Rooted strands are tangled in his fingers from where he soaped at Sam's hair and watched it expel in return; a rebel with no real motive but to pull at Dean's aching heart, torment it in the crevices of emaciated baby bones. 

“You deserve good things, Sammy, and all I do is screw that up for you.”

“Ok.”

“Sam.”

“I know. I deserve good things.”

Sam turns his velvet body and Dean feels a moment later, a set of skeletal hands and lips pressed against his with more eagerness and movement than he's seen from Sam the entire week.

“If I deserve good things, then you'll give me this.” 

Dean closes his eyes and for the second time that day, wonders where he went wrong.

\--

Dean goes looking for coffins one day, when he thinks Sam might actually die.

The Undertaker is nice and well dressed, with a face of grief shown off by unruly wrinkles and a pair of thin glasses resting at the apex of his nose. Dean doesn't think he could be more than 40, but he's got the eyes of a century-long dead spirit, clinging to them with possession and Dean almost, for a pregnant moment, feels bad.

“Can you show me the coffins that would fit an average 16 year old boy?” 

When he sees the size, he coughs and feels vomit swell up his throat with heat - simmering, poisoning the space. He smells noxious, like unbathed stray dog and soaked alcohol that didn't come out in the wash, and he shuts his eyes against the reality that he can't see anything past the emptiness of violet taffeta.

“No,” He says, "these are too big.”

When he's shown the child size, Dean wonder’s how he ever let Sam get to be this small.

He drives back with a business card, keeps the number stashed inside his wallet.

\--

“Dean,” Sam says.

“Huh?”

“Are you mad.”

“I don't know, how am I supposed to feel when someone falls asleep with my dick in them?”

“Sorry.”

“Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“I'm so scared, man.”

“I know.”

“No, listen, I'm terrified that you're going to die. It scares me so much sometimes because I don't...” Dean's words catch against the grit of his teeth; he's clinching them so hard he thinks they might break. “I don't know when you're going to go or how it's going to happen - If you'll drift off in your sleep or suffer a fucking heart attack. I don't know and it scares me. God, I wish…”

“You wish what?” The tremble in Sam's voice goes unheard as he leans up, presses his forehead to the base of Dean's spine.

“I wish I could just do it myself, because at least then I'd know. I could have time to grieve your death like a normal fucking person.” 

Dean scrubs a hand down his face, pushes away from Sam with disgust, and Sam just nods.. fucking nods.

\--

Sam's birthday comes a month after, so they stop at a diner on the outskirts of New Hampshire. A little place called Annabell’s, with outdated anchored seating and a wind up record player, buzzing damaged Johnny Cash vinyl into a room filled with rowdy drunks. Dean feels familiar in the age of it, how winded down and nearly superannuated the building was.

Paulette, their waitress, tells them to address her as Paulie and to mind her blue hair. Dean laughs, wonders briefly if she had ever been a mother.

He calls her sweetheart instead, asks for the classic hamburger with extra onion. When she turns her gaze to Sam, bright pink lips, stretched thin with a smile, Dean leans back, opens his arm up for the empty space beneath it and let's Sam settle there, looking too young to be this small, looking too old to be this gone.

“He'll have the chocolate cake,” Dean winks, “it's his birthday today. 17!”

“Awe well just of course! Happy birthday, darling. I'll bring that right out.” 

Dean can feel the rising pressure of Sam's pulse against his fingers, but throughout all the times he's held them there, it's never sounded quite like this. Dean thinks it sounds like the rush of ocean waves, hungering for solid ground. Dean thinks it sounds like the chaotic rebellion of a spirited kid, aching for his life back.

Paulette returns 10 minutes later with a giant slab of cake and side order of fries to go with Dean's burger.

Sam looks at the him and looks down at the cake, purising it as if to calculate the weight it could hold inside him, but he smiles nonetheless as he melts his fork into a thick layer of frosting and chocolate base, says with finality and promise,

“I love you.” And takes a bite like it weighs nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> What a beautiful thing recovery is! 
> 
> I incorporated a lot of myself into this story, but not to the point where I didn't try to make Sam his own character.
> 
> I'm seriously so proud of my boy, right now, like I might actually cry :')
> 
> anyways, I hope everyone is well!!! comments make my day ❤️


End file.
